Paul Adrian Fried / HAMLET'S BIBLE

In The Corisco Conspiracy , Raphael Sóne's has written a book of fanfiction that takes readers on a wonderful romp, exploring possibilities about the mystery that is Shakespeare. It can be a fun for any reader, but especially for those aware of four things: (1) Shakespeare authorship debate (and authorship collaboration research). (2) The Gunpowder Plot. (3) Shakespeare scholarship’s "turn to religion," circa 2000, considering (among other things) Catholic influences. (4) Awareness of how Shakespeare has been used as a tool of empire, mostly for the benefit of fair-skinned English people. The Corisco Conspiracy: A Memoir of William Shakespeare , combines some of these, as well as an awareness of how the author’s Jesuit predecessors attempted to overthrow the English government and return Protestant England to Catholicism. Many agree that Shakespeare collaborated with other writers far more than the First Folio would have us believe. What if some of them were African, or M...

This year is the 400th anniversary of the printing of Shakespeare's First Folio, which contains 36 plays that it labels as 15 comedies, 10 histories, and 12 tragedies. Some of these have later been called problem plays or romances. Of the 36 plays, 18 may have been lost forever if not for the printing of the First Folio. - There are a few others that we know Shakespeare had a hand in that are not included in the First Folio: Two Noble Kinsmen, Pericles, and Edward III. - There are also lost Shakespeare plays: Love's Labour's Won, and Cardenio. - And some Folio plays are known to have been collaborations. The exact date of Shakespeare's birth is not known, although his baptism was recorded as taking place on April 26, 1564, and his death on April 23, 1616. To keep things neat and tidy, his birth and death are observed on the same date, April 23, and this year, the anniversary of the First Folio has attracted special celebrations and publications. Seven years after Sh...

If scholarly bias is in some ways analogous to war between opposing camps, those who win certain battles for a time may not win the war in the long run. Or at least it sometimes seems that way. History is often written by victors whose crimes are erased along with the suffering of the vanquished. How does this apply to Shakespeare and Francis of Assisi? [Images, L-R: Secret Shakespeare by Richard Wilson (2004) , and The Saint and the Sultan by Paul Moses (2009). ] * Shakespeare incorporated not only Protestant, Puritan, and Catholic themes in his plays, but often specifically Franciscan themes. In both literal and figurative violence of religious and cultural wars in medieval and Early Modern Europe, Franciscans were twice the losers, first to Rome, then to England. Francis of Assisi (c.1181-1226) was a reformer in his own right who recognized ways that money, power, and violence had corrupted the Catholic church. He expressed solidarity with and love for the sick and poor. ...

[Paapa Essiedu as Hamlet in 2016 RSC production, screen capture] Some may think that countless high school students believe Shakespeare's Hamlet is a play about a girl whose dad won't let her date a certain boy, and the boy is later very, very mean to her, and he later kills her dad accidentally, and she later commits suicide, and later many other people die too, including the boy, his mom, and his uncle. Oh, and his mom's the queen of the country, and it turns out that she had wished her son would marry the girl (yes, the same girl whose dad prohibited her from seeing him). Ironic! What's with that? [Image via me.me ] Many scholars still believe Hamlet is mostly a play about a prince with mommy issues (ignoring the political contexts and frame). So what might average white people make of a mostly-black-cast, African-themed, 2016 RSC production of Hamlet, with Claudius in western military garb? What shall we make of the ghost of the king, the brother th...